What Today’s Wealthy Look Like

The majority of high-net-worth Americans are paving their own gold brick roads.

Some 67% of U.S. investors with at least $1 million in assets are self-made millionaires and are earning their wealth “mostly on their own,” according to a survey released Thursday by BMO Private Bank, a division of BMO Financial Group. Of the one-third of wealthy Americans who said they were born outside the country or who have at least one parent who was, that figure rose to 80%. Just 3% of those sampled said their wealth comes from an inheritance.

BMO Private Bank polled nearly 500 Americans with $1 million or more in investible assets.

The survey found that 37% of wealthy Americans are women. Nearly half of the women said they created their own wealth, while 29% said their wealth comes from their spouse.

The findings affirmed many trends the bank had been seeing, says Terry Jenkins, president and chief executive officer of BMO Private Bank. Women are increasingly coming into more wealth and the bank is making overtures to that demographic as a result, he says.

He expects women to remain a priority for the bank in coming years.

The survey also found that one quarter of high-net-worth Americans are younger than 40, while 54% have a graduate or professional degree.